Migration isn’t just for the birds

Migration is the oldest action against poverty. It selects those who most want help. It is good for the country to which they go; it helps break the equilibrium of poverty in the country from which they come. What is the perversity in the human soul that causes people to resist so obvious a good? J. K. Galbraith

July 6, 2005 was a day for celebration in London. As the crowds in Trafalgar Square noisily cheered the news that the city would host the 2012 Olympics, a much smaller and more subdued ceremony was taking place a few miles away at the Westminster Register Office. Standing beside a framed photograph of Queen Elizabeth II and a large Union Jack, a grey-haired man in a bright red, fur-trimmed robe decked in white gloves and a big gold chain was addressing a room of some 40 people of all ages and colours.

“Today is a very important day in your lives,” said the Deputy Lord Mayor of Westminster, “You are now British citizens and are entitled to vote in this country. … We welcome you here today into this nation and into this community of Westminster. You are now full members of the British family. As British citizens, we hold dear the values of tolerance and respect to others. I trust you will be loyal subjects and observe the law.”

The new British citizens then swore - or affirmed, in the case of non-believers - their allegiance to the Queen. Understated yet momentous, it was all over in less than half an hour.

As we left, Adriano, my Brazilian - and now British - friend, was grinning from ear to ear. “I’m like you now,” he beamed.

On July 7, London’s joy turned to horror as four British Muslim suicide bombers blew themselves up on a bus and three Tube trains, killing 52 people. As Londoners reeled at this callous attack on their way of life, their mayor, Ken Livingstone, captured the public mood: “This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.”

The roll-call of the dead poignantly underscored Mayor Livingstone’s words. The 52 victims included many foreigners and Britons of foreign descent, whose varied backgrounds highlight London’s status as a cosmopolitan city of opportunity.

These immigrants were not the lazy, dishonest scroungers of tabloid fare; they were the lifeblood of a diverse and dynamic global city. Among them was Shahara Islam, described as “a thoroughly modern Muslim, a girl who loved her … fashionable clothes while at the same time respecting her family’s wishes that she sometimes wear traditional shalwar kameez at home. She went shopping in the West End of London … but would always be seen at the mosque for Friday prayers.”

Her short life was an eloquent answer to those on both sides of the divide who claim that Islamic immigrants cannot successfully integrate into Western societies.

A microcosm of the debate

It is a cruel irony that I began writing Immigrants Your Country Needs Them just as my city and everything it stands for came under attack from terrorists who were British-born but of foreign descent.

But at the same time, the London bombings have helped crystallise the debate that is at the heart of this book: should we welcome or seek to prevent the unprecedented wave of international migration that is bringing ever greater numbers of people from poor countries to rich countries like Britain, Spain and the United States? Fear of foreigners versus the dynamism of multicultural London: a microcosm of the wider debate about immigration that is raging around the world.

As our societies age and many businesses complain they are short of workers, the pressure to let in immigrants grows, but many people in rich countries remain unconvinced.

In the United States, President Bush has sent the National Guard to patrol the border with Mexico to keep out unwanted immigrants, while pundits warn that Hispanic immigration risks splitting America in two. The government tries to juggle its desire to attract talented foreign students and workers with heightened fears about national security since 9-11. As record numbers of Africans risk death on flimsy boats to reach its shores, Spain erects ever higher walls - six metres high at the last count - around its enclaves in North Africa to try to close off Europe’s southern gateway.

France’s largely immigrant suburbs erupt into riots to protest at poverty and discrimination, while rioters in Sydney launch violent attacks on Lebanese immigrants.

John Howard comes from behind in the polls to win Australia’s general election in 2001 by declaring that “we will decide, and nobody else, who comes to this country” and turns back a boat laden with Afghan refugees.

Do the new arrivals pose a threat to everything we cherish - jobs, the welfare state, our national identity and way of life, even our freedom and security - or does their diversity in fact enrich and invigorate the economy, culture and society of their adopted homes?

Could we put a stop to immigration if we wanted to, or is it an inevitable consequence of a globalising world riven between rich and poor?

And what should we do to help the immigrants and people of foreign descent who are already living among us fit in better?

These questions are not only about Them, and their possible merits and faults, but also about Us - what kind of place, country and world we want to live in; how far our sense of solidarity and justice extends beyond national borders; how much we value diversity and to what extent we fear it clashes with other values we hold dear; and ultimately whether our concept of Us is broad and flexible enough to embrace Them too.

Whenever people talk in the abstract about the pros and cons of immigration, one should not forget that immigrants are individual human beings whose lives happen not to fit neatly within national borders - and that like all human beings, they are all different.

How different, though? Different better, or different worse?

Such basic questions underlie whether people are willing to accept outsiders in their midst. Are the newcomers perceived to be honest, hard-working people keen to fit in to their new country, or feckless, scrounging layabouts who make no effort to adapt to their adopted society - and might even harbour bad intentions towards it?

Perceptions - or prejudice - matter more than reality, since foreigners are strangers and therefore largely unknown. The truth, of course, is that immigrants may be good, bad, or probably a mixture of both.

Generally, though, I believe they have two big qualities: they are typically hard-working and enterprising. Why? Because every immigrant is also an emigrant, and it takes courage and enterprise to uproot yourself to a foreign land.

Broader questions arise when immigrants arrive in sufficient numbers that they start to change their adopted society. Greens may be concerned that a rising population puts additional strain on the environment. Trade unionists may fear that the newcomers threaten the jobs and wages of marginal workers. Taxpayers may fret about the burden they might impose on the welfare state. Cultural conservatives may worry about their impact on national identity and social mores.

Such concerns must be addressed, because even though freer international migration can bring huge economic and cultural benefits, it also requires political consent. Already, as immigration has risen in recent years, it has sparked a backlash in America, Europe and elsewhere.

Fear of foreigners

About a million people migrate legally to the US each year, and maybe another half a million - nobody knows the exact figure - enter the country illegally. Europe admits some 2.8 million foreigners each year, with another 800,000 or so - again, nobody knows for sure - entering illegally. Canada, with a population of 32 million, admits about 235,000 permanent migrants a year; Australia, with a population of 19 million, about 150,000 (but about 60,000 foreigners leave each year).

These are big numbers, but what makes them especially significant is that people in rich countries are having far fewer babies than ever before, which means immigrants account for a rising share of the workforce and population in rich countries - and an even larger share of the population increase.

Immigration has already changed the faces of many rich countries. In 1970, there were only 10 million foreign-born Americans; now, there are officially over 37 million - plus several million uncounted illegals - and the new faces are mostly Latin American and Asian. In a country fractured by race and fragmented by the unintended consequences of “affirmative action” (the well-meaning attempt to give blacks and later other minority groups a hand-up through positive discrimination), the new wave of immigration has sparked a fervent debate about the changing face of America.

In The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, Pat Buchanan shamelessly sought to exploit heightened fears of terrorism in the aftermath of 9-11 to stir up anti-immigrant feelings: “Suddenly, we awoke to the realization that among our millions of foreign-born, a third are here illegally, tens of thousands are loyal to regimes with which we could be at war, and some are trained terrorists sent here to murder Americans.”

More recently, Samuel Huntington, in Who Are We? America’s Great Debate, warns of the risk of a “bifurcated America, with two languages, Spanish and English, and two cultures, Anglo-Protestant and Hispanic” and the potential for a backlash against this: an “exclusivist America, once again defined by race and ethnicity and that excludes and/or subordinates those who are not white and European”.

An even more vitriolic backlash is sweeping through Europe, where the number of foreign-born residents has soared from 10 million in 1970 to 29 million in 2000. In Britain, tabloid newspapers fan fears about the country being swamped with feral foreigners, accusing them of all manner of ills - stealing jobs, scrounging welfare benefits, spreading disease, committing crime, plotting terrorism and so on.

Germany is struggling to accept that its Turkish minority is there to stay. The Dutch are questioning their long tradition of multiculturalism.

Regardless of whether rich countries choose to admit more immigrants, they clearly need to do a better job of integrating those who have already arrived.

A global debate

Migration is increasingly a global issue, yet the debate about it is still mainly conducted along (hostile) national lines - as if each country were an isolated citadel threatened by hordes of barbarian invaders.

The increase in international migration is not occurring in a vacuum: it is part and parcel of globalisation, the combination of distance-shrinking technology and market-opening government policy that is bringing the world closer together.

This is most obvious in the case of skilled professionals - people like investment bankers, management consultants and computer specialists - who increasingly operate in a global labour market. In some cases, such as the City of London and Hollywood, they cluster together in one place to serve the world market. At the same time, multinational companies span the globe by deploying skilled professionals around the world to serve separate national and regional markets. Many businesspeople spend their year jetting around the globe, forever on the move.

What is true for skilled professionals is increasingly true more generally - or at least it would be if rich-country governments weren’t desperately trying to prevent it. While governments broadly accept, or are even actively encouraging, the creation of a global labour market for skilled professionals, they steadfastly refuse to allow most other people, especially those from poor countries, to cross borders in search of work.

Although the US admitted 946,000 legal immigrants in the fiscal year 2004, most of them were allowed in because they already had family in America. Only 155,000 were admitted on work visas, and only 5,000 of those were for unskilled foreigners seeking year-round work.

Likewise, it is almost impossible for people from poor countries who do not have family in Europe to migrate legally to work in the European Union. And although Canada and Australia admit large numbers of foreign workers each year, you don’t stand a chance of getting in unless you have certain skills or professional qualifications that politicians and bureaucrats deem necessary.

While governments are making it easier for goods and capital to circulate around the globe, they are seeking to erect ever higher national barriers to the free movement of people.

Although most governments wouldn’t dream of trying to ban cross-border trade in goods and services - only North Korea aspires to autarky these days - outlawing the movement across borders of people who make goods and provide services is considered perfectly normal and reasonable.

Yet the global economic forces driving poor people to cross the world in search of work are pretty similar - and seemingly just as beneficial - as those that lure foreign bankers to Tokyo, scatter Coca-Cola executives around the world or, indeed, cause us to import computers from China and beef from Brazil.

Would-be migrants have a huge incentive to relocate: even allowing for the higher cost of living in rich countries, wages for equivalent jobs are typically five times higher than in poor ones. The disparity in wages between rich and poor countries is so huge that university graduates from poor countries are often better off financially driving cabs in rich countries than doing graduate work in their country of origin.

So, They need Us. But, as my book argues, We also need Them.

Some migrants come to do the jobs that people in rich countries no longer want to do, like cleaning, waiting tables and picking fruit. Others come to do the jobs that not enough people in rich countries can do: filling a shortage of nurses in Britain’s National Health Service, for instance. And increasingly, as our societies age, they are caring for our old people.

In effect, most of these migrants are service-providers who ply their trade in foreign countries.

Over the next 20 years, the supply of potential migrants in poor countries is likely to continue rising. While rich countries’ baby-boom generation are nearing retirement age, poor countries’ much younger baby-boomers are just starting to enter the labour market.

Many of these young people will be tempted by the prospect of a better life in North America, Europe or Australia, especially since moving to a foreign land seems less daunting now that there are established immigrant communities in most rich countries.

At the same time, the demand for migrants in rich countries is set to rise, as ageing populations and shrinking workforces put a strain on businesses, economies and government finances.

Whether this increased potential for migration translates into higher immigration in practice depends on what border controls rich-country governments maintain and how effective they are at enforcing them. Ultimately, then, it depends on Us.

An economic boon

Sober-minded economists reckon that the potential gains from freer global migration are huge, and greatly exceed the benefits from freer world trade. As I explained in my first book, Open World: The Truth about Globalisation, the freeing up of global trade in manufactured goods in the second half of the 20th century led to a quintupling of the world economy and an unprecedented rise in living standards in both rich countries and poor. So just think how opening our borders to migrants could transform our world for the better in the 21st century.

Or, to put it another way, if you believe that the world is an unequal place and that the rich should do more to help the poor, then freer international migration should be the next front in the battle for global economic justice.